A complete, free workshop guide plus slides you can run with your team this week.
The full facilitator guide, the slides and a one-page cheat sheet. Everything you need to run it.
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Happy Monday
Fable 5 was pulled back from us EU users late Friday / early Saturday, and I do miss it already. Strangely, how quickly you can get accustomed to using something. Wasn’t even a week in of using it, but the feel was different with Fable 5. Let’s see how this all plays out.
This was intended to be published on Saturday but then life happened and things got in the way. But better late than never. Here you’ll get a 30-45 min exercise to run with your team, and this works with almost any team. I’ve run it with HR, finance, IT, sales, legal, marketing, customer service and what not.
If you want me to run it with your team + even more practical exercises and tips and tricks, reach out.
I’m fully booked in September → mid-October, but I do have spots left in August + November, and I’m always happy to run sessions like these!
Most AI sessions go the same way. Someone runs an impressive demo, everyone nods, and on Monday nobody changes a thing. The problem is not the tool; the problem is that the value was shown on a made-up example nobody in the room recognizes.
This exercise flips that. Instead of you showing what AI can do, people discover it on their own problems. It takes 30 to 45 minutes, needs no prep beyond wifi, and works in any room. There are two reasons it works.
People are far more likely to start when they see AI solve a task they own.
On work they have done before, they already know what good looks like, so they can judge the result instead of trusting it blindly.
I’ve run it on god knows how many people now; it’s well above 7,000 at this point, and I know this is an effective way to get people to use (gen)AI.
If you need help running this, reach out.
There’s a PowerPoint you can download here to accompany this workshop; feel free to adopt it as your template and as you see fit. This is uploaded here under CC-BY, meaning it’s totally fine to use it as long as you mention me and, ideally, point people to subscribe here. :)
Step 1. List your problems. Five minutes, alone and quiet.
Ask everyone to write down tasks that are recurring, time-critical, stressful or just boring. Aim for three to five. The only real requirement is that it ties to their own role and stays concrete. “Summarise long email threads” can be tested. “Communication” cannot. Tell them this is private working material and they will choose just one or two to share later, so they can keep the rest to themselves. That makes the list honest, which is important.
The question to put on screen. What in your week do you wish you didn’t have to do yourself?
Step 3. Warm-up.
Start with a warm-up so everyone is logged in and past the first hurdle. “I work as X. How can I best use AI in my role?” This is to get people settled in on using the tool and also to make sure that everyone is logged in. Great time to help people with initial hurdles before diving it to what matters.
Step 3. Test AI live. Fifteen to twenty minutes, hands on the keyboard.
Then each person picks one real problem and describes it the way they would talk to a colleague, getting as much context out as possible rather than hunting for a clever prompt. A move that works well is to ask the model to ask you three questions back before it answers. Then push the result. Ask for improvement, say what was missing, and note roughly how long this would have taken by hand.
This is the heart of the session, so be active in the room. In practice it is usually two or three people who need help, often the same ones you can spot in advance, so hover near them. The rest sort it out at the table, and one good hit spreads fast. The usual problem is not running out of things to do, it is that people want to keep going! Let them.
Step 4. Share at the table. Ten minutes, out loud and open.
Go around with three questions. Which problem did you test and what happened? Did the result surprise you, either way? What will you try this week? Sharing makes the value visible to everyone and builds the habit of talking openly about AI, which is one of the biggest reasons adoption sticks or fades. The third question matters most.
The pitfalls
The most common one is taking over the screen and demoing. Then it is a lecture again. Sit on your hands! Other ones are abstract problems that cannot be tested, where people start hunting for the perfect prompt instead of a good dialogue, and, last but not least, end without a concrete next step.
How to avoid the last one?
Ask everyone to name one thing they will try next week. Not something they should learn, but something they have already tried in the room and now take with them. Have them put it in the calendar, because the most common failure is going back and doing exactly what you always did. People rarely commit to a self-reminder, but they happily remind a colleague, so pair them up. A spoken promise in front of the group is what makes something happen.
And there you have it!
Hope this can serve as a useful base!